down to the wire….crossing the 7th furlong...rounding third base...

We are down to the wire …. crossing the 7^th furlong …. rounding third base …. in the shootout after the tied score third period, in the Red Zone (oh, allow me to hold off on that one since the Steelers didn’t win the Super Bowl!!)….

This Friday we take our FAA Written Flight Dispatcher Final. The final is about 130-ish questions, a mixture of all of the chapters of the Gleim Study Guide, which are all of the questions which can be on the FAA final. The book has over 1300 Q&A’s, so, I imagine if you could simply memorize the book you could pass.

My brain, unfortunately, isn’t wired like that. Besides, real life experiences are usually a combination of 3+ situations at the same time, so, even though you might pass the written, a week from then we get the honor of being with an FAA Examiner mano y mano for 4 hours, asking you questions, calculating flight plans, tossing some weather situations at you here and there….. so you have to know your stuff !!

Nervous?? Not me!! (well, maybe a little ….)

It gets to a point in this class that all of this begins to click and tie in. Yes, the written is a no book event, but the person-to-person test allows you to use all of the texts that Jeppesen provided, just like you’ll be able to do in real life.

Between now and the final, we need to squeeze in some Federal regs and aircraft systems of the 737. I’ll be busy busy for the next few days, learning new info and doing a lot of review.

I want to speak about the quality of the instructors in our class. Steve taught the 1^st two weeks in his specialties of Weather and ATC. What a brilliant man, and a great instructor. A lifelong weather geek who to this day does the hourly report (METAR) and forecast (TAF) for Denver’s Centennial Airport (KAPA). Steve also worked at several ATC facilities across the states. Smart guy.

Taking over after Steve is Katie. Katie is an airline pilot who knows aircraft procedures, systems, loading factors, navigation and regs inside out. Although she’s a Green Bay Packers fan, she’s a great instructor. She’s speaks to all levels of the class, those who speak pilot speak and those who are new to it. She has a lot of material to cover and does it well.

New instructor guy Mark steps up to the plate every now and then … a former USAF pilot who’s flown corporate, Mark is a bright guy and another great instructor. He's doing his student teacing gig with us ... they'll cut his shirt tail and he'll solo the next class.

I’m impressed with the faculty Jeppesen has put together for this Dispatcher course.  

Gotta go …. Studying HazMats, Federal Av Regs part 121 and 135, and then I take a practice test on all.

Review, review review …..

I'm enjoying every second of this. I made a good decision to come to Jeppesen for this course.